ABOUT AVA
Ava is an Assistant Professor of Women's Studies and American Culture. She received her Ph.D in American History from The University of Texas at Austin, and she is trained as a Historian. Her research includes African American and women's history, fitness culture, and public health. She teaches on these topics as well, examining the intersections of race, gender, and health.
"As a younger person, I never really saw myself in the stereotypical depictions of a feminist. The moment I started to think critically about gender, its intersections, and being convinced by a feminist worldview happened when I was taking a course in African American Women’s Literature as an undergraduate student. We were reading Harriet Jacobs's Life of a Slave Girl, and there’s a line that reads, “Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women... They have wrongs, and sufferings, and mortifications peculiarly their own.” After that, I started thinking about how certain institutions are gendered. You don’t think about the gendered implications of slavery until you’re exposed to them. Institutions, particularly slavery, are gendered male, and women have to insert their voices as a form of disruption."
Women who speak up for themselves and for other women in gendered institutions are considered to be disrupting the peace. There are so many more people who speak up now, but for a long time most people were silent, so the ones who were brave enough to say something were thought to be out of line and out of context. When just a few people fought back, it was easy to assume that everyone else was okay with what was going on. But for women, in particular, the implications of speaking up were very dangerous, so it was unlikely and unsafe for someone to speak up alone. As more and more women risk the backlash of disrupting, it becomes clearer that things haven’t ever been peaceful. I think we’ve mostly moved past the claim that women just want to complain, we’ve legitimized much of the oppression and discrimination that occurs in so many institutions. But it’s so frustrating that is takes such large numbers to just be taken seriously, as if any of this oppression has ever been an isolated event. A lot of women for a long time were afraid to disrupt, and then their only choice was to live in pseudo-peace, just as those before them had done until enough women came forward and made it seem like there might be another option.
"My work is on Black women’s health. I’m working with some colleagues and collaborators on a field that we’re calling Black Feminist Health Studies. As far as I can tell, the rest of my scholarly career will be dedicated to understanding the intersection of race, gender, and health, and advancing this field. I am most concerned about racial and gender health equality, eliminating barriers to health, and reducing health disparities. When thinking about this field, I am very committed to Black women in that sense, but I also believe that when you address the concerns of Black women, you’re going to address the concerns of all the women that are on top of the socioeconomic hierarchy. I really want to see Black Feminist Health Studies become a viable field. I want to see that field have a material effect on women’s health outcomes."
Ava’s work is an amazing example of how feminists have come up with ways to address really specific contexts where discrimination is very concentrated. Focusing on these areas where several intersections lie has an enormous effect because it improves the outcomes for people who have any one of those intersecting identities. I recently did another project about Hollywood’s diversity problem, and how studies have shown that it starts in the writing room. When the writing teams for television shows and movies are made up of only White men, women and people of color are largely underrepresented, or represented stereotypically, and often inaccurately. This isn’t necessarily due to outright racism or sexism, but simply because people tend to write about themselves. When writing groups are comprised of people with diverse identities, films and pilots have a significantly better chance of succeeding. There’s still a huge diversity problem, but the accurate and plentiful representation of women, people of color, people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ+ community, and other minority groups will help close the gap. I think recently feminists have been really intentional about identifying root causes of oppression and targeting them in their activism.
"A debate historians have with other academics is when do we start to call feminists, “feminists.” I have trouble calling Sojourner Truth, or Anna Julia Cooper a feminist because it's anachronistic and out of line with how I’m trained as a historian. But if we were to call these 19th and early 20th century women “feminists” or “proto-feminists,” and we think of ourselves as a part of that genealogy, then in a way I could say we have come super far from a historical perspective. We have dozens of Women’s Studies programs, we have a respected field of Black feminism, from which these women are the progenitors. We have a language for gender equity and all of this. But we can also make an argument that we have not come that far in our thinking because those women were brilliant and prescient theorists, and we are products of that."
This argument is very important when thinking about generational differences in feminists because it’s actually something that connects the generations very deeply. Certain concepts that we now have names for were introduced long before they were implemented into feminist practice. I was looking for generational differences, which definitely exist, but in a lot of ways, the ideas associated with 21st-century feminism are not all that new. The traction that these “modern” concepts received was certainly more significant as time went on, and in some cases, after they were reintroduced, but we did not invent them. It's necessary for the new generations to look back on those who were fighting for equality before it had a name because they are who we have to thank for doing so much of our groundwork. We've been caught before claiming the thoughts of our progenitors as our own, sometimes unintentionally. I think my generation can forget the long history that produced feminism.
"I still think those who believe in feminisms, plural, have to keep reminding those in the dominant group that they have to think about others. We are in a moment where it’s not as acceptable to privilege middle-class, White women’s concerns as the definitional form of feminism. Being intentionally intersectional in one’s version of feminism is expected and encouraged in ways it was not a generation ago. I mean this in popular culture as well as the academy. The progress is that this is now addressed, but the fact that we are having to address it still is not as progressive. Black women are working really hard, and doing a lot of physical, intellectual, and media labor. “Progress” is a fault word because it’s progressive in that they are able to have a platform, but its regressive in the fact that they have to do it."
After the 2016 election, the mantra of “Black women will save us” started popping up. And while it meant to praise their continued fight against oppression, it took the responsibility off of anyone who isn’t a Black woman. It takes for granted the time and resources that get eaten up in the process of saving oneself, let alone the rest of the country, particularly for the groups that are the most socially vulnerable. So yes, we are prone to intersectional thinking, and we like to think we’re being supportive. Sometimes feminists succeed, but those in the dominant group that Ava mentions keep missing the mark. They still have yet to figure out how to appreciate everyone equally and correctly. Feminism seems to be getting closer to true and equitable progress, but the majority of the work tends to fall on those who experience the majority of the oppression. We use the term "feminist" as an umbrella term, but all the people who identify as such are not always working toward the same goals. I've learned to not assume that every feminist I meet is on the same page. Feminists believe in equality, that's the definition, but equality for whom often varies.